The Vanagons of Arise Music Festival - Loveland, Colorado

[sanchius]

Arise Music Festival - Aug 2015 - Loveland Colorado - www.arisefestival.com

My 20-something kids and I spent a couple fun days at the Arise Music Festival just west of Loveland, Colorado last weekend.

It was lots of good music and fun people having a good time and keeping their dream of peace and love alive in the sunshine, all set in an amazingly beautiful location in the foothills of the Rockies just northwest of Denver.

The girls went up on Friday afternoon, to secure our camp spot and catch the first evening's acts. My son and I were back home rushing to finish my SyncroWesty and get it up there to act as our moonbase. But it was not to be. When it was clear that things weren't going well, I threw in the towel early Saturday afternoon and and we blasted up in his Audi before we missed any more of the weekend.

Even though it was my first multi-day music festival, my oldest daughter had been to plenty and we had things dialed in just about right with her guidance and all our camping gear. A 10x13 sun awning that we used as a tent, a cook table & camp chairs for all, lots of fine food and liquids to share, with thousands of cool young folks around us enjoying the music and events.

It was a very well put together event organized by professionals who clearly have extensive experience in the large-scale music festival business. Nothing felt out of control, there was plenty of water available and the facilities were far better than expected, security was at just the right level and none of our gear walked off. Car traffic inside the area was minimal which helped keep the dust down, the no dog rule was pretty strictly enforced, the camping was located just far enough from the stages that the late night concert noise wasn't a big deal and everyone seemed to be there to enjoy themselves rather than to cause any trouble.

But we had a different type of noise issue. The only thing that didn't go well for us was that, while most everyone around us were fine kindly folks, our particular car camping spot was tightly sandwiched in between a pair of giggling chem-fueled cutie-pies, let's call them Molly & Mandy (google it), with their yappy faux service-pug and another group of equally fueled hairy party animals who seemed never to have a thought enter their heads that didn't come booming out of their mouths at full volume. They weren't bad people, just LOUD people of a type I'm not accustomed to. It was plenty interesting hearing one of the animals relate his recent alien abduction experiences to us or having Mandy come bouncing up to borrow something from our cook box wearing just her cutoff jeans and a smile. It was far less entertaining when they were still giggling and yacking it up at full volume at 5am in the morning as the sun was coming up and we were trying to sleep.

But we were the festival noobs, not them. All the warning signs were there, we just didn't pay attention to them. Next year we'll know to hoist up the anchors on the HMS Curmudgeon and shift over to one of the quieter open spots on the edge of the car camping area, like where the smart couple with the blue subie SyncroWesty with the tiedye sunshade was parked.

Sunday morning, just before Bluegrass and Bloody Marys started up, my daughter and I walked around to take pics of the various Vanagon camping set ups (below). There were many vanagons, a few euros and bays and no splits in the car camping area. According to my other daughter, Arise was the safest and most well organized festival that she'd been to. Sunday night my wife was able to join us and we caught the last few acts, including a really moving bit with Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul and Mary.

All in all, it was a great weekend, with excellent music & fun people.

We've already picked up our tickets for next year and I have a request in to the organizers for a dedicated VW Van camping area.

Next up on the fun schedule: Breckenridge Oktoberfest Sep 11-12: www.gobreck.com/events/breckenridge-oktoberfest

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[Gnarlodious]

Thanks for that report, maybe I’ll go next year!
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Vanagon ’83 diesel AAZ w/Giles injection, 5spd 4.57R&P+TBD and a '78 diesel Rabbit

[highaltidude]

[Wolfram]

I saw that white one with the bubble gum pink grille i Boulder about 10 days ago.
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88 Westy, '07 EJ25 Vanaru.
Either van-less on Waiheke Island in New Zealand where we spend the Southern summer, or Wolfram is in Seattle/Olympia in storage.

[sanchius]

Arise 2016 was another great weekend music festival.

Three days of nonstop noon-2am bluegrass/newgrass, reggae, rock, electronic & acoustic music, performance, aerial & fire shows; art, yoga, movies & workshops, it all was great.
As before, the festival was very professionally run and organized; it felt safe, well lighted, traffic controlled, with lots of water and clean facilities.

And this year we had wonderful neighbors of all ages all around us representing a wide slice of Americana,
from students, housewives, organic grocers/farmers & river guides with great stories,
to precision machinists, restaurant & IT pros, and an older chemistry phd student who knowledgeably answered any questions we had,
to a particularly delightful couple in their late 60's who worked with villages in Peru to trade their local crafts for solar and clean water installations who handed out 100's of apricots to everyone from their western slope fruit farm.
In fact, we all ended up talking so late into the night that I think we were the bad neighbors this year.

We learned last year that sun & rain protection was essential, so we went in big with two 10'x10' pop-up shelters with ground tarps, Persian rugs, sheepskins, side shade/privacy tapestries and lots of chairs to share. It worked perfect for the light sprinkles the first night and the intense sun the last days. We had so much coverage that I didn't even bother to deploy the van's side awning that I had installed a few weeks ago. The initial clouds, cool and humidity when I took most of the pics were actually a welcome break from the strong sun & heat we knew was coming. Once the sun and dry heat hit, we made a quick shower setup on the side of the van for refreshing and cooling dust-off sun showers (2nd pic).

With our 20-something kids and their friends helping with the gear, handling most of the food logistics, making sure we made it to the most interesting shows and just being there as fun festival, dancing and conversation buddies, it was a very fun and easy weekend

There were many Vanagons...

Some tidy Euros...

Lots of nice Bays..

and one really really nice 21-window splitty conveniently parked a just few spots away ( you can see my pop-top in the last pic)

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[Bulli Klinik]

Bus scene is alive and well in CO!

Hope to see all at Buses at the Brewery.

https://www.facebook.com/Colorado-Buses-at-the-Brewery-184288431618852/
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I've never met a Bus I didn't like.
Mike K
Bulli Klinik
Colorado Springs

[DenverB]

[sanchius]

ARISE 2017 was a fun weekend of music, people and fun.
As before, it was full of nice vanagon, bay and euro campers and their equally nice owners
(L & L from Kansas, it was great talking with you. Drop me a line when you get the chance, I need your South African contact for that MkI Golf rear light project)

Unlike the past few years, it was wet, quite wet.
The weather forecast was spot on, the rain came precisely at 3pm on Sunday.
Unfortunately, it also came about the same time on Friday and Saturday as well, accompanied with some strong microbursts that put to flight more than a few poorly staked popups.

The breakthough last year was the double 10x10 popups off the back of the Vanagon, with a big ground tarp and a couple of persian rugs, which made for a luxuriously large, dry, camping area.

This year, the big advance was setting up a Lightspeed sun shelter on the hillside facing the main stage.
Outfitted with a couple blankets and pillows, it served awesomely as a sun-shade, rain shelter, chill-out and known meeting place.
It was rarely empty, gave great shade when it was sunny and stayed very dry even in heavy rains.
At some points we had 6 people huddled inside, nice and dry when it was pouring out.
I know I saw a lot more music this year because I could just kick back and relax up there, taking in the music at a distance, rather than walking all the way back to the camping area when I got tired of being near the stages.
Yeah, it rained, but we were prepared and it just wasn't a big deal.

But this is a bus list, not a shelter list, so here they are....

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[sanchius]

Is anyone else going to be at Arise this year (Aug 3-5, just west of Loveland CO)?

We'll be there, but with the Westy in NV now, we'll be car camping out of one of the kid's wagons.
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[sanchius]

We went to Arise again this year and had the drill down to a fine routine.

But we all so tired/relaxed from working too hard that we spent too much time lounging at our base camp or the pop-up satellite tent or going to bed & getting up too early to get immersed into the real rhythm of the festival.

But there were lots of buses...

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